My father was a preacher, and for many years I’ve said that one of the highest compliments I could give him was to share that he was the same person in the pulpit that he was in our home: a godly, sincerely humble man, grateful for God’s grace, which he knew he needed and which he knew he could never “earn” on his own. So it was no surprise that as my family and I sat around the table the night before my father’s funeral earlier this week, I found a way to concisely share the one word or one statement that summarized something important I had learned from my dad:

“Be the same person on both sides of the door.”

There is great freedom in authenticity. I often think that it must be exhausting to be one person in front of one group and another person when with another group. No, we don’t know all people on the same level or for the same reason, so our conversations and levels of intimacy vary, depending on the relationships. But at the core of each relationship, the same person should exist within us.

We often find great comfort in the fact that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8, NIV). Yet those words should also serve to remind us that right beside His love, mercy, kindness, and compassion that we long to reflect in our lives, His genuine “sameness,” a demonstration of His humility, should be seen in us—from both sides of the door.